Brought to Light Australian Art 1850-1965

of the 1930s in which the body beautiful (and healthy) was a symbol of a new wodd of strength, vitality and rational modernity, but does not endorse any political platform. Nor is there the jolly, hedonistic abandonment of careless sunbathers, which was a popular motif throughout the period. In answer to the question of why his works were seen as 'quintessential^ Australian', Dupain mused that he was not sure if he or his audiences knew what they meant by that statement. He pointed out that his work was mostly based in NewSouth Wales, but that his 'Australianness' stemmed from his devotion to his country. also the implication that Dupain's honest, direct (male) response in capturing the images of Australia was in tune with a national identity. On receiving his Companion Order of Australia in 1992, Dupain allowed himself a little long-term ambition in musing that perhaps the pictures were only now 'taking hold'.1 Dupain's fellow photographer and then Director of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, Hal Missingham, was the first to cast the photographer as the visual poet laureate of Australia. He contributed the foreword to the 1948 monograph on Dupain, claiming that, 'When I look back over the last seven years since my return from abroad I find Dupain was a reluctant traveller who left Australia only twice for war or work reasons and was scornful of the fever that took photographers and artists overseas in search of culture and inspiration: My whole life — if it's to be of any consequence in photography — has to be devoted to the place where I have been born, reared and worked, thought, philosophised and made pictures to the best of my ability .10 Dupain most frequently stressed that it was his quest for simplicity that was the particular quality in the subjects he chose to present. Yet in his own considerable body of writings from 1935 on, and in the accolades he received in later life, there is that my memory of the images of our land is made up in great part of the penetrating camera statements of Max Dupain'. Missingham also praised Dupain's images for their movement, a quality seen as particularly photographic, singling out Surf race start, Manly c .1940 s as an example. He does not mention Sunbaker II which is also supremely photographic in its tonality and dynamic, but not an action shot.12Reviewers of the monograph similarly made no mention of Sunbaker II, perhaps for the same reason — it lacked the simple polarities of action or abandon that were associated with the increasing popularity of surfing and beach culture through the 1920s and 1930s. Much of the appeal of Sunbaker (the QAG version) is in its stillness, but there is also a counterpoint between relaxation and the inherent coiled energy in the man's musculature. The image has simplicity and drama, austerity and sensuality. Within the triangular composition of the central figure/form the flow of angled and undulating lines converge to a central point around the shiny vortex of the man's crown. The sensuous quality of the water droplets on the skin, the rivulet patterns of body hair and sand-tipped fingers have a curious echo of the intense physicality in the slighdy earlier still-life photographs of the American modernist Edward Weston.13 Just how Dupain's spontaneously snatched vision on the beach came about is a little less simple than his comments suggest. If we begin by looking at the moment of exposure, we can dismiss the idea of Sunbaker as a lucky shot.14This was the work of a professional photographer, albeit one on holidays. It was taken on a Rolleiflex, not a Box Brownie, and its striking triangular composition clearly points to the aesthetic intention of the artist. Every beach-goer has probably witnessed a similar event, but few are vision- and camera-ready as was Dupain. Sunbaker had to be shot at ground level, and, as sand is anathema to cameras, the image had to be made with care. The harsh lighting conditions needed a professional's understanding of exposure — how much to give to record both the enormously bright and reflective sky, sea and sand and the tonal details of figure and shadows. The contrast in light encompassed in the subject is made clear in the contact print off the surviving negative. In printing, the sky and beach have to be 'burned in' with extra exposure. The contact print reveals the accuracy of Dupain's exposure and the acuity of his eye; the exhibited version is virtually the full negative, with cropping restricted to the foreground largely to remove a dominating shadow and to make the image a horizontal rectangle reflecting the form of the subject. The unusual perspective of Sunbaker is also well outside the average photographer's imagination or technical expertise. The 146 BROUGHT TO LIGHT: Australian Art 1850-1965